Foresworn
by Vixen of Light
Summary: Helga Hufflepuff's world crumbles as the four Founders split apart forever. Helga/Salazar, Rowena/Godric, Helga/Godric. Mild religious themes explored.


"They killed him," said the man. It was the bald way he stated it, Helga later thought, that made her pause, that shocked her from her grief at the mutilated body before them. Devoid of anything, even horror, even surprise, really. "They chased him here and they cut him down."

"I expect," said Helga carefully, swallowing, "That they were afraid."

Salazar's lip rose in the faintest hint of a sneer. "Because he went to track them down, hated them enough to wait for them to be alone, to rid the world of them and their...evil?"

"You don't know that," said Rowena, her face a mask. Only Helga, who knew her too well, knew that she did feel something, deep down, well hidden. Salazar closed the unseeing eyes of the dead student.

"Mobilicorpus," he intoned, and whisked the body into the air. In another world, it would have been comical, thought Helga dryly, helplessly, to see the body flopping about, broken and beaten and bloody. In another world, the student would have woken up, perhaps. In another world, there would be no need to hide away like vermin for fear of extermination.

They trooped, an honour guard for the dead, back to the castle. Godric remained silent all the way, but he watched Salazar's face; every twitch, every glint in his grey eyes, every sharp flick of his wand. Helga pursed her lips and wondered what he saw, although in truth the apprehensive beat of her heart told her all she needed to know.

-

"We regret to announce," said Rowena who inevitably got left to make the dinner announcements, "That one of our number has been killed by Muggles a short way from Hogwarts. We shall be implementing further Repelling spells, but may I remind you that leaving the castle is strictly forbidden. After dinner you may return to your rooms."

She did not mention that the student in question was Salazar's nephew, but among the forty or so students that they mentored in the castle, they all knew, anyway. No-one would have the indiscretion to mention it, of course, and Salazar would continue to teach as if nothing had happened. At the moment, however, at this dinner, he was not present, and neither was Godric.

"Classes shall continue as normal," Helga added perfunctorily, somehow feeling that something else needed to be said to break the sudden heavy silence. One or two students nodded, and dared to begin to eat again. Helga glanced at Rowena, but there were no answers there, nothing but a brittle rigidity. Of course, Helga thought, since Helena had left, something of Rowena had left with her. Her pride was all a show now; her spirit had paled.

She kept going; what else could she do? But the loss of her daughter, the only link to her long-dead husband, had broken something in her. Helga could feel the all-pervasive, almost-physical weight of tension in the castle...and the fear. "Muggles should not be integrating with wizards," Salazar had shrugged when, a few months ago now, a student had first come crying to Helga after being confronted in the nearby village by a vicar's son. "Alone, perhaps," Godric had said, turning a baleful eye on his oldest friend. Helga had winced to see that look. "But a group against one person, no matter who they are, can cause damage. Everyone needs protection." And of course, the very next week a small mob of young men, led by the vicar's scripture-quoting son, had tracked down the student as he walked a little way from the castle and run him through, before the horrified eyes of his intended. "Repent!" the wild-eyed youth had screamed at the terrified girl, too afraid to draw her wand before the swords pointed at her. "Or you too shall burn in the fires of Hell for eternity!" Leave from the castle had been banned from then on.

-

"It is a Muggle belief," said Rowena over the evening meal of the four, "That magic is a form of evil, a mark of the Devil."

"Some of my students have had trouble accepting their powers because of that very reason," said Helga, remembering one who had been disowned by her family as a sinner. She took a sip of the vintage wine from her goblet, remembering the student's terrified self-hatred at being marked one of the lost.

Salazar's expression was grimly triumphant. "They are too dangerous, too arbitrary, for us to associate with in any capacity." He looked coldly at Godric, then Helga. "How can you disbelieve me now, old friends?"

"Those who are magical need training!" protested Helga. "Training and support...can you imagine how long they would survive in their homes without our intervention?"

"That cannot afford to be our concern," said Salazar, raising his voice a touch. "We have to protect our own before we can think of anyone else. They would happily see us all slaughtered for the sake of a few words in an old book which is most likely mistranslated anyway..."

"Beliefs are important," Rowena said coolly, touching a finger to the cross around her slender neck. "Even Muggles know of divine mystery..."

"You!" hooted Salazar, a touch of cruelty in his expression. "You just pray to the emptiness, the darkness, that your daughter and the Baron survive alone somewhere, that your whole life hasn't been in vain, and for all that you bow to a God who apparently tells his followers to kill those who don't fit in, and..." It was more of a slap than a blow, but Salazar swayed a little under the force of it. Rowena's face was white.

"How...dare you?" she hissed, and it was the first time Helga ever remembered seeing her friend lose control. "Just because you have no soul to touch..." And the beautiful woman left, trembling, followed by Godric.

"This cannot be forgotten," he said coldly as he turned away. It was always this way, thought Helga, staring at the green-robed man opposite her, his cheek burning dull red from Rowena's hand, his eyes black with fury and betrayal. The words cannot be unsaid.

"Will you leave me too?" he said, turning to her. "Will you let interlopers drive us to ground for the sake of ignorance?"

Helga was silent for a long time, before finally whispering, "I cannot let ignorance continue, though."

His lips twisted into a bitter smirk. "Then more will die," he told her, and watched her flinch.

"Perhaps," she admitted. "But more than even that will die if I do not."

"Rowena truly believes?" he said, with no apparent reaction to her words. "How can she?"

"She feels the magic in the...Bible...is a metaphor, not meant to mean the innate ability," said Helga uneasily.

Salazar laughed. "But you and I know better, do we not? We belong to earth and water, you and I. We know that gods rise and fall even as the world itself does. That the only continuity is magic."

Helga said nothing. Rowena rarely discussed her religion, although Helga had seen a small shrine in her room. Helga herself had the unformed beliefs of a maiden of the Earth, just as Salazar knew.

Sensing his advantage, he leaned closer to her. "Stay with me," he breathed, reaching out his hand to her. "We can leave...start our own school. You can take your favourites with you and we'll protect them, and then we will be safe, far from madness, far from those who can never understand. Come with me..."

Startled, she rose from her chair. "Salazar, what...?"

"Helga..." his voice was soft, sinuous, mesmerising. "Rowena is long lost. Godric...has become a fool. Be mine...come with me." Helga's face paled as she stared at the man before her, his eyes glittering, beautiful and terrifying.

"Salazar...my students need me. I...I can't...I can't leave them...I'm so sorry, Salazar..." And she picked up her skirts and swept out, heart pounding so fast she could hardly hear her own footsteps above the sound.

-

Over the next few weeks, the four of them barely interacted. Helga could hear Rowena praying, angrily, in the evenings, while Godric's tense, stern face betrayed only to those who knew him well the confused sadness at the absence of his oldest friend. Salazar himself...

Only Helga seemed to see him much any more. He taught his classes then by evening would vanish to one of his own haunts about the castle. He ate alone. His favourite student, when Helga carefully asked, claimed he was working on a defence project within the castle. When she did see him he would smile at her, slowly, in a way that had it been anyone else Helga might have called 'seductive'. She returned a worried look, a careful invitation to talk, but he would turn and sweep off, leaving her standing alone in some corridor, nervous and filled with some awful trepidation she had no name for. The Salazar of old, the ambitious idealist...some part of him had died with his nephew. He had always been cautious, but she and Godric had opened his eyes to those magical children who were not of traditional wizarding stock. That Salazar had charmed her with his sly wit and grace, had admired her for her strength and persistence in their project. That Salazar, she had hardly dared to hope...

"But not like this," she whispered, turning her deep brown eyes to the domed ceiling above, refusing to cry. "Oh Salazar, what has become of us?"

-

Eventually Godric confronted him, flanked by a white-faced Rowena, her long fingers tangling nervously in the bronze edging of her robes. Rowena was never nervous. Helga, who had been strolling with curious pleasure down the endless corridors that morphed into further magical discoveries every time she visited, flattened herself against a pillar which shifted lazily to hide her. There they were, the tableau of three (a prophetic horror, surely), surrounded by motes of glittering dust as the sunlight hit them, outlining them, facing off in the product of their own genius.

"Old friend," Godric pleaded (and Godric never pleaded, either). "Come back to us...together, there is nothing we cannot solve, no trouble we cannot overcome."

Salazar sneered, stepping back from them. Helga wondered if any of them had noticed her observing in the shadows, wished she was not torn between who she should step forth and stand beside. "You will let them endanger us all, those of no pure blood, those whose blood is merely...mud...?"

"You call my ancestry mud?" Godric snarled, and his hand crept inexorably to his sword, unstoppable.

"I call those who would exterminate us mud," said Salazar coolly, his eyes following the movement of his friend's hand.

And Helga knew it was that moment above any others that broke their relationship irreparably. If only Godric had held his hand out instead...if only Rowena had stopped Godric...if only Salazar had swallowed his pride to show regret...if only she had stepped out and said these things.

Rowena drew herself up. "I cherish wisdom in all who display it. I will not live to see you bar those who would champion that."

There was a pause, a moment of considered balance on the trembling tightrope wire. Say sorry, Helga begged Salazar mentally. Apologise. Remember how it was once... His thin lips parted. Helga held her breath.

"You..." he whispered, and then he smiled, the first smile of genuine cruelty Helga had ever seen on his face. "You will not live to see anything. You're dying, Rowena, alone, unwanted, and there will be no comfort for you, in your useless wisdom or in anything."

Rowena swayed as though he had slapped her, and Godric pulled her to him to steady her.

"You go too far, Slytherin," he roared, and with his other hand drew the sword sharply from its scabbard, pointing it towards Salazar's throat. "You dare?"

"Threaten an unarmed man?" Salazar's eyes narrowed in malicious triumph, although Helga saw for just a moment the horrified betrayal in his expression. Oh, he covered it too well for the raging Godric to spot, but it was there, for just a moment. "Yes, I can imagine that would be your style, just as a Muggle would do..."

"I won't kill you," Godric breathed, "Know that. Not without a weapon. But I will not have you in this school to breed hatred, to insult those to whom you owe the creation of your wizarding haven, to destroy us all..."

"No!" Helga cried, and stumbled out from behind the pillar. "Godric, don't say it..."

"I'll leave," Salazar hissed, knocking the point of the sword away contemptuously and half-turning to Helga. "I will found a better place, a home to ensure that when the Muggles wipe you out, that there will still be wizards alive in Europe." He raised his eyes, black with fury and finality, to Helga. "My last offer. Come with me." His voice softened just a touch. "Please. Marry me, Helga, and come with me..."

Helga felt herself tremble, but there was no-one to steady her. I choose alone, as we all have had to, she thought, desperate and afraid. We thought we could be as one, but we were wrong. She looked to Godric, staring at her blankly, waiting, and at Rowena, her own blue eyes huge in her pale face. She had discussed with her best friend Salazar's intentions a thousand times, the two women giggling in a way more appropriate to their students.

"Could you love him?" Rowena had asked gently, and Helga had paused, then, blushing, nodded.

"I think I could," she whispered in reply. Now Rowena's eyes held fear, a dreadful certainty.

And at last Helga turned to Salazar, and met his eyes, trying to transmit to him that she had loved him...that she did love him. That she understood...and yet, that he was wrong. "I can't," she whispered, her voice breaking, and grit her teeth. She had to be strong. No-one else could be. "I cannot...cannot leave. Everyone should have a chance. The Muggles were wicked, but to abandon those who need us would be more so. The only way to stop ignorance is to fight against it. Please...I'm so sorry, Salazar." She walked, slowly but finally, over to Godric and rested her hand lightly on his other arm.

"You too?" he whispered, and she knew she had hurt him, really hurt him. Untouchable Slytherin.

"Forgive me," she said, hating that this conversation, too intimate for public showing, had to be here, had to be now, had to be these answers. "I lov-"

"Don't say it," he spat. "How dare you...to me? Foul slut..."

Helga flinched, but held her ground. "How could you change so? Once, you were..."

"Once," he said, his lips twisting in a self-mocking smirk, "Once I let myself be fooled by you all. Never again."

"Get out," Godric said levelly, raising the sword again. "Your presence defiles this place. I would bid you farewell, but it appears my friend has been long dead."

"Oh, I leave," Salazar said, the hideous smirk widening, "But not without a token of my regard for your Mudblood school. Something I thought would defend us, something which I hope destroys you before you have the chance to destroy yourselves..." He laughed, and let his eyes drift to Helga once more, let his gaze roam over her face and harden into something unrecognisable to her. "Farewell, my once bride. I would wish you well, but there will be nothing but suffering for your folly. The woman who was worthy of me was nothing but an illusion, I see."

Helga said nothing, kept her chin lifted. Her heart would not break for him...not before his eyes. Not yet. "Good bye, Salazar," she said, she felt Rowena's fingers lace around her own behind Godric's back, squeezing tightly. She clung to her friend's touch, watching as the man she had loved strode from sight, and as soon as he was gone, she wept.

-

They somehow never spoke of it again, except to announce to the students that 'due to a misunderstanding' Salazar Slytherin had resigned his teaching post 'for the foreseeable future' and that the lessons he taught were to be shared between the other three. In time they would be recruiting a new teacher.

A few months later, with still no word or news of their lost member, Rowena, her health no longer strong after the griefs she had suffered, fell ill – Salazar's final prediction was coming true. Helga sat, numb, by her friend's deathbed, holding her hand, Godric, with damp eyes, stood at the foot of the bed, looking down on the woman whose beauty and vibrant wisdom had awed him so deeply, now merely a wasted shadow.

At last Rowena forced open her eyes and whispered, "When I am gone…marry. Please. Marry Godric – he's a good man, and he cares for you. There has to be some sort of unity. I know you don't love him, and I know he does not love you (dear blunt old Rowena, same as ever!, thought Helga), but…for the sake of Hogwarts?"

"Perhaps," said Helga, "But how can I care about anything now?"

"You must. You were always the strong one," Rowena managed a weak smile. "If…if Helena returns…forgive her. For me."

"Anything for you," Helga whispered, feeling her eyes prickle with tears.

"No, no weeping, not yet," Rowena murmured, her voice weakening. "You have to listen. You have to tell Godric…that…he…left something here. I'm sure of it. There is something in this school, something of…his…as he said. Something dangerous. I see…certain strange signs…" she coughed, and Helga leaned closer, holding her friend.

Rowena leaned into Helga's ear and breathed, "I am not afraid. I shall see my husband again soon. And we will meet again. But here…protect Hogwarts."

"For ever," Helga swore, and Rowena relaxed back on her pillow. "Goodbye, my dearest friend. Do not grieve…for anything. We have done a wonderful thing with our time here." She exhaled, and smiled gently. She did not breathe again. And as Godric took Helga's hand and drew her away, house-elves carefully closing the great Ravenclaw's eyes and covering her with a blue shroud, another part of Helga's heart died. But she had sworn, and forsworn, for this. What little heart she had left was Godric's, and Hogwarts'. For ever.


End file.
